


Modern Girls & Old-Fashioned Men

by sarken



Category: Real News RPF, SportsCenter RPF
Genre: Coming Out, Coming of Age, Inappropriate Relationships with Teenagers, Lesbian Character, The 80s AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-20
Updated: 2011-06-20
Packaged: 2017-10-20 14:36:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/213810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarken/pseuds/sarken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In August 1989, sportscaster Keith Olbermann interviews high school senior Rachel Maddow at a baseball game. The two quickly develop a friendship that helps both of them stumble toward maturity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Modern Girls & Old-Fashioned Men

**Author's Note:**

> This story wouldn't exist without Henry and Nicole and the foundation they helped me create nearly two and a half years ago, but it wouldn't have gotten done without J and Ali. They talked me down through every crisis and made me think through every bout of writers block. Then, as if that weren't enough, Ali proof-read this thing -- twice. Thank you.
> 
> [A chaptered version of the epub is available for download here.](http://sarken.dreamwidth.org/1798563.html)

01\. September 4, 1989

Keith hates fan interviews.

It's not the fans who are the problem, but the drunks, the kids, and the know-nothings who gravitate toward the camera like moths to the flame. He hates having to push through them to get to the fans who love the sport, the loyalists who stick by their teams in good seasons and bad. They're the kind of people he likes to interview, not the fair-weather fans in brand new jerseys and caps with unshaped brims -- he likes them with some wear around the edges. That's why, when his eyes settle on this kid, Keith knows he's found the one.

The kid is maybe fourteen, on the scrawny side with hair that's a little too long, but he has on an old, worn hat. Oakland's colors are faded, and the adjuster has creases that mark the stages of its owner's growth. This is the hat of a lifelong fan.

Keith waves his cameraman over and makes his way down the Coliseum's stairs, stopping one step above the kid's row. "Excuse me," he says, standard introduction at the ready, but he stops as the kid turns around, looking away from the game with a frown.

The kid isn't the fourteen-year-old boy Keith expected. The kid is a girl, maybe sixteen, whose eyes narrow when she takes a close look at him.

"You're the new sports guy on KPIX." The way she says it, Keith gets the impression she isn't a fan, but her tone brightens slightly when she says, "My dad likes you."

Keith nods, accepting the compliment. "But you don't agree?"

The girl shrugs and gets up from her seat. "I could like you," she says, stepping up to stand beside him. "I just think you try too hard. You don't have to act like a jerk to remind everyone you're the smartest guy in the room."

He should be annoyed, but he's distracted by her crooked smile and her brown eyes, which are surprisingly close to his. She has to be nearly six feet tall.

"You don't talk much in person." The girl crosses her arms over her t-shirt, which says ACT UP in bold, black writing. The weather is unseasonably cold, so Keith isn't sure whether her crossed arms are about confrontation or body temperature, but they draw his eyes to her chest.

"Where's your boyfriend?" he blurts out. It's a non-sequitur, but one less likely to get him slapped than the alternative of _you're not wearing a bra_.

The girl laughs. "He's getting a hot dog," she says. "But you don't want to talk to him."

Keith raises his eyebrows. "Why not?"

"He's a Red Sox fan." She rolls her eyes.

Keith turns his head toward the diamond and glances pointedly at the scoreboard. "They're winning, you know."

The girl scrunches up her nose. "I'm aware."

"You don't think I want to talk to a fan of the winning team?" he asks.

"No." She doesn't have to think about her answer, and Keith doesn't have to ask her to explain. "You saw I was wearing an A's hat and you came over to me. You don't want to talk to a Red Sox fan or a fan of the team that happens to be in the lead; you want to talk to an A's fan. You just saw I was a girl and it made you think twice."

"You're perceptive."

"Actually, I'm Rachel." She holds out her hand, and he takes it.

"Keith," he says, shaking her hand. The introduction is unnecessary, but it seems like the thing to do even though it makes her smirk. "I need a fan interview for the six o'clock."

Rachel cocks her head. "I'm pretty sure you're on at eleven."

"Not tonight."

"How come?"

"You know, I'm supposed to be the one asking questions," Keith says. "But as long as we're on the topic of not being where we belong, this game's been going on for almost three hours. You're not worried about getting caught playing hooky if we do this interview?"

She looks down at her shirt. "Considering the last thing I got in trouble for? No."

He can't let that go. "And what was that?"

"You should watch the rest of your network's broadcast sometime," she says. "The people you work with, they might not be as smart as you, but there's some useful information on there. A lot of ACT UP demonstrators were arrested a few months ago."

"Were you part of this 'a lot'?" he asks.

Rachel grins. "Aren't we supposed to be talking baseball?"

Keith hates fan interviews.

 

02\. September 9, 1989

Later that week, Rachel is waiting for him when he leaves the station. She's leaning against a lamppost, her arms crossed and shoulders hunched forward like a hoodlum ready for a fight. Everything about her warns Keith to keep walking, but he approaches her instead.

"I thought you weren't worried about getting busted," he says, still a safe distance away. As he gets closer, he sees something that might be confusion flash across her face. "It's not my fault if you got caught playing hooky."

"Your concern is touching," she says, "but I didn't get busted. I'm actually here because I want to know: who edits your tape?"

"I do." He's not sure he likes where this is going.

"And you always edit it to make your interviewee look like an utter bitch, right? It's too early in our relationship to assume I'm just special like that."

Keith has to hand it to her. He doesn't get reactions like this frequently, and when he does, they're usually from forty-year-old men with beer bellies or frat boys fresh from keggers. "Our 'relationship'?" He scoffs and starts walking away. "If you'd watched the broadcast, you'd know I was trying to make a broader point about the A's fanbase."

Undeterred, Rachel follows him. "I'm not part of their 'broader fanbase,'" she argues, her clear voice starting to carry when they step into the parking garage. "The guy had a broken wrist for half the season. You were there when I said it. I was defending him, and you made it sound like I was dissing him for having a bad season. I'd like to see your ass out there, hitting a record number of home runs after recovering from a broken wrist. For that matter, I'd like to see you, in one piece and at the top of your game, hit the broad side of a barn, let alone seventeen homers."

"I'd do better using my hands than my ass, but I'll concede the argument." He finds his car and opens the unlocked door, but doesn't get inside. "I couldn't hit seventeen homers in a season, much less half a season. I couldn't hit _one_. Neither could the fans who say Canseco's washed up because he hit seventeen instead of twenty."

"Which is why I was mocking them," Rachel asserts. "Instead, you acted like I was actually saying those things, and then you mocked _me_ for it. You took what I said completely out of context. Worse, you stole my idea."

Keith watches her walk around the other side of the car and throw open the door. She gets in with a flounce, like it's her boyfriend's car and they're in the middle of a spat. "What are you doing?" he asks, ducking his head to look inside.

"You're taking me out to eat," she tells him, her tone making it clear that she thinks he's an idiot. "I don't care where, but you're supposed to buy a girl dinner before you take advantage of her, so you're already behind."

"Didn't your parents ever tell you not to get in a car with strange men?" He's amused by her audacity, and he's pretty sure it shows on his face.

Rachel buckles her seatbelt even though Keith has yet to get in the car, much less start the engine. "I figure you like your job enough that you're not going to risk losing it by killing me and dumping my body on the side of the freeway."

"I just moved here," Keith says. "That's a big assumption to make about a guy who's new in town. I might really hate my job and see sacrificing a high school junior as my only way out."

"Well, I'm a senior, so I'll take my chances," Rachel says with a shrug. She scoots back in her seat and kicks her feet up on the dashboard, crossing her legs at the ankles.

Keith gets in, closes the door, and reaches out to knock her feet off the dash. "I'm buying you food," he says, turning the key in the ignition and backing out of the parking space. "It's going to cut into my cleaning budget, and I don't want your shoeprints on my dashboard for the next month."

She gives him a dirty look. "Like you'd notice a footprint on the dashboard more than the smell of all this dead and decaying Mickey D's." She kicks some sandwich wrappers under the seat.

"I might not kill you and dump your body, but I can still kick you out of the car."

Rachel ignores him. "I want pancakes," she says. "A really big stack of pancakes with a few slices of bacon. No, wait. Sausage. Maple syrup goes better with sausage."

"I thought you didn't care where I was taking you," Keith says, putting the turn signal on.

"I don't, as long as they've got pancakes."

 

03\. September 9, 1989

Keith watches in amusement as Rachel enthusiastically tucks into a stack of chocolate chip pancakes. "Do you think Canseco was right to come back despite not being at the top of his game?" he asks, taking a bite of his club sandwich.

Rachel sets her fork aside as she considers the idea. "Well, they _are_ first in the division," she says, licking a smudge of chocolate from her thumb. "But I assume you meant for that question to extend to all injured players, just like you wanted my interview to encapsulate the feelings of all A's fans. You know, you could just try asking the question you want answered."

He has to admit he's impressed by how intelligent she is, and by how fearless she is when it comes to putting him in his place. He thinks her parents and teachers probably have their hands full with her.

"Okay, you got me," he says lightly. "I'm going for the big picture, kid. Lay it on me."

"I play volleyball," she says. "I play too hard and I can be kind of a spaz, so I've broken and sprained and strained more things than most guys in the NFL. If Coach thought I was dragging the team down by coming back too early or playing hurt, he'd pull me in a heartbeat, but I know myself and I know my teammates -- they'd bench me or I'd bench myself before Coach said a word. I think most pro athletes have at least that much sense."

Keith smirks. "I've been covering sports a long time, and I take issue with that assumption."

"All right, fine," Rachel says, and she stabs a piece of her pancake but doesn't eat it. "But isn't there something to be said for routine and comfort, for knowing McGwire's going to be the one there when you throw to first? I'm not saying he should be out there in a body cast; I'm just saying that, if the guy feels up to it, let him play. Especially when it's Canseco, who probably plays better on his worst day than most guys do on their best. So there's your big picture brought full circle."

She turns her attention back to her pancakes, and Keith finds it jarring to no longer be on the receiving end of so much energy and intensity. It's gone, all of it, even the gusto with which she first attacked her pancakes, and her sudden calmness gives Keith his first chance to really look at her.

Rachel's baseball cap is pulled low over her forehead, casting a shadow across her face, so Keith focuses on her hands. She has long, thin fingers that grip the fork a little too tightly, and the faint bruises on her forearms are evidence of how hard she plays her sport.

"Where do you play?" he asks, and Rachel looks up in surprise.

"Castro Valley," she says. It sounds like a question to Keith's ears, like she wants to know why he asked.

"We ran the volleyball standings earlier," he says, scanning them in his mind. "You won tonight. Why are you eating pancakes with me instead of celebrating with your team?"

Rachel looks back at her plate, pushing soggy pieces of pancake around in the mess of syrup. "I broke up with my boyfriend tonight," she says quietly, splitting the sausage link with the side of her fork. Keith tries not to think about how Freudian it is.

"So you thought you'd accost me rather than face your teammates?" he guesses. She's chopping the sausage into smaller and smaller pieces, and Keith wonders if it's intentional. He thinks he'll have to find something else to look at before he starts laughing.

Rachel abandons the sausage and shoves a forkful of pancake into her mouth. She makes a face and visibly forces herself to chew and swallow. "Something like that," she says, pushing her plate away. "Besides, the good part doesn't start for another hour or so."

"The 'good part' starts at two o'clock in the morning?" Keith asks incredulously. "Isn't that a little late?"

"No. Weren't you ever in high school?" Rachel rolls her eyes. "Linds' boyfriend -- he's in college -- his roommate works at the beer distributor. He'll buy a keg and bring it over, but he likes to make us wait."

Keith pinches the bridge of his nose. "Stop," he says. "If I know the details, I have to call the cops."

Rachel picks up her drink, taking a sip through the straw, and Keith is struck by the childlike gesture until Rachel says, "I didn't tell you where the party is, dork. What would you say? 'Somewhere in the city, underage drinking is taking place'? Good luck not getting laughed at."

Keith sighs. "So, you broke up with your boyfriend," he says, trying to steer the conversation away from things he shouldn't know. "Why?"

She's silent for a few moments, stirring her Coke with the straw. The ice taps against the plastic sides of the cup, and she knocks the lemon wedge into the glass, stabbing it and pushing it toward the bottom. "I dunno," she says finally, shrugging. "Seemed like the thing to do."

 

04\. October 11, 1989

Keith pulls up in front of the school gym in time to see a bunch of giddy, jumping girls in blue burst through the doors, and he immediately knows not just that he has missed the game, but that Rachel's green Trojans have lost.

He sighs and finds a place to pull over. It's only a few minutes before Rachel comes out, dressed in her street clothes and with a gym bag slung over her shoulder.

Keith rolls down the window. "Hey, kid," he calls, and he sees her head jerk up. He sticks his arm out the window to wave her over. She smiles when she sees him, and he opens the passenger door when she gets close. "Hop in."

Rachel reaches for the door, but stops short of getting in. "My car's in the lot."

"Mine's right here." He gives the dashboard a pat. "C'mon, let me cheer you up."

Rachel shrugs and tosses her bag onto the floor before getting in and shutting the door. "Good luck with that." She kicks her gym bag to make room for her legs while she buckles her seatbelt. "How'd you know?"

"I'm a sports journalist, kid. It's my job to know these things. Seriously. They actually pay me for this."

Rachel doesn't crack a smile. "Where are you taking me?"

"Just up the street," he says. "I'm pretty sure I saw a park."

"Getting arrested for trespassing isn't going to cheer me up."

"I thought you were into that." Keith takes a glance at Rachel to check her reaction, but her expression is unreadable. He sighs as he pulls the car into the park's shoddily paved lot and cuts the engine. "So, your A's are going to the Series."

That makes her smile. "They're gonna kill San Francisco. It'll be over in four games. Five if the Giants get lucky."

Keith shakes his head in amusement. "You surprise me, kid. You seem like more of a San Francisco girl."

Rachel shrugs. "I am, usually. Just not in baseball."

"Ah, but that's where it counts." Keith claps a hand over her knee and leans across the console to grope under the passenger seat. When he finds what he's looking for, he sits up, two baseball gloves in hand. "You up for it?"

Rachel gives him an odd look. "Isn't ice cream the traditional cheerer-upper?"

"Yeah, but baseball's better." Keith gets out of the car and works his hand into the leather glove.

Rachel gets out a moment later, and he tosses one of the baseball gloves to her over the roof of the car. She catches it, but she doesn't put it on. Instead, she studies it, turning it over in her hands and running a finger across the autograph scrawled low on the palm.

"Pete Rose?" she asks sardonically, eyebrows rising. He can see her smirking under the orange glow of the streetlights.

"Cost me fifteen bucks to get that autograph. Yankee Stadium, '77 All-Star Game." Keith nods at the glove. "That glove's probably older than you, kid."

Rachel leans against the car, head cocked as she looks at him across the low roof of his Fiero. "I just want to make sure of something," she says. "You're the same guy who was on my TV back in August, all but demanding Pete Rose's head on a platter, right? 'He bet on the sport, it didn't start the day he took himself off the roster, keep him out of Cooperstown,' etcetera, etcetera, ad infinitum. And yet here you are with his autograph on your glove."

"Guilty," Keith says. "In my defense, he was a good player."

"One of the best," she agrees. "Too bad he got greedy."

"You think it was greed?" Keith asks, ducking inside the car and feeling around until he finds a baseball. "They say it's an addiction, you know."

She shrugs. "Maybe it was that, then," she says, slipping her hand into the glove and flexing the leather. "You have big hands."

Keith isn't sure if that's an innocent observation or some sort of innuendo, so he hesitates before speaking, buying some time by tossing her the ball and watching it arc lazily over the car. It drops into the pocket of her glove with a solid smack. "They match my head."

 

05\. October 27, 1989

The knock is "Shave and a Haircut," but Keith doesn't rap out the traditional two-note response before yanking open the door. It's two in the morning at the end of a long week, and he isn't in the mood for Rachel.

"Hi," she singsongs, dragging the word out as she steps inside. She spins around in a circle, her arms outstretched, teetering from side to side when she stops. She grins. "I was just watching you on the TV machine."

The corner of Keith's mouth twitches upward and he fights the smile, trying to hold on to his bad mood. "Oh, were you?" he asks, and the smile creeps into his voice just to spite him. It might be impossible for him to stay in a bad mood with Rachel around.

Rachel nods, and she's drunk enough that her entire body moves with it. "Your tie's ugly."

Keith gestures at his pajamas. "I'm not wearing a tie." He has to hold in a laugh as Rachel wrinkles up her nose and thinks hard.

"TV-you," she says. She cocks her head, sort of. It's more of a loll. "I've never seen you-you in a tie. Do you have ties?"

"Me-me?" he asks, biting the inside of his cheek. When Rachel looks at him, he can tell she's at least dimly aware he's mocking her, but hasn't yet decided if she cares.

The little shrug she gives a second later tells him she doesn't.

"I'm looking for your ties," she declares, turning and walking unsteadily down the hall, laughing when she trips over her own feet. Keith shakes his head and follows her to his bedroom, leaning against the doorjamb and watching her survey the room.

"I bet I know where they are," Rachel says. She opens the topmost drawer of his dresser, knocking a pair of rolled-up socks onto the floor as she pulls out a tie and gives Keith a victorious grin. She drapes the tie around her neck and reaches back into the drawer.

Keith watches her sort through the drawer and study each tie before deciding whether to drop it back inside or place it loosely around her neck. Most of the ties end up partially in the drawer, spilling over the sides, but there are four or five Rachel leaves around her neck. She holds on to their ends as she throws herself onto Keith's bed.

"Where's your mirror?" she asks, sitting up, crossing her legs beneath her.

It's on the back of the door, and Keith steps into the room, closing the door to let her see. "Are those the best ties or the worst?" he asks, sitting next to her on the bed.

Rachel shrugs. "They're the least worst," she says, tucking her hair behind her ear as she looks in the mirror. She tilts her head from side to side, moving much too quickly for her eyes to really focus. "I really only like the one."

"Which?"

"This." She wiggles the skinny end of a purple tie.

Keith hums. "Then let's get rid of these," he says, taking the other ties from around her neck and tossing them aside. He scoots around on the bed until he can get a good look at the tie Rachel is wearing.

It's strange and clumsy, tying the knot on someone else, and Keith has to think hard about the process. Rachel isn't helping with the way she keeps trying to see what Keith is doing, but he manages a passable Windsor before sitting back.

He waits for Rachel to say something, but instead she slides off the bed and walks toward the mirror, head cocked as she studies her reflection. Keith watches her backward image frown and adjust the knot, centering it before letting her shoulders slump.

She crosses her arms and looks at Keith in the mirror. "I look weird."

The disappointment in her tone is out of proportion to the situation, and Keith would laugh if he didn't feel so bad for her. Instead, he says, "It's the shirt," and walks over to his closet. He grabs the first clean dress shirt he sees and holds it open for her. "You need something with a collar if you're going to wear a tie. C'mon, kid, stick your arms in here."

The sideways look Rachel gives Keith says she isn't drunk enough to believe wearing his shirt will make her look any better in a tie, but she goes along with it, letting Keith button the shirt, straighten its seams, and lift her hair free of the collar.

"Better?" Keith adjusts her tie even though it's already straight and centered.

Rachel shrugs. "Maybe." She turns away from the mirror and tosses herself onto Keith's bed, lying on her back. Her feet rest on the mattress and her knees wobble as they point toward the ceiling. "Can I stay here tonight? It's just that I'm tired, and I don't..."

This should be the part where he says something about responsible adults not letting teenagers drive drunk, but Keith is still waiting to feel like a responsible adult. He lets the lecture and the phony pretense slide. "Yeah, sure. If you need some pajamas, I'll even throw in that spiffy shirt you've got on, free of charge."

Rachel tries to smile, but it turns into a yawn, and she goes with it, rolling onto her side and tucking her hands beneath the pillow.

Keith chuckles. "Uh-uh," he says, reaching under the pillow to grab her hands. He hauls her up onto her feet and propels her toward the door. "I'll give you the shirt off my back, but I draw the line at the bed. You get the couch, kid."

 

06\. October 27, 1989

Keith wakes up sometime close to dawn and grumbles to himself as he rolls over, putting his back to the window to avoid the impending onslaught of sunlight. He closes his eyes, expecting to drift back to sleep, but there's a lump beneath his hip. It's annoying and uncomfortable, and he reaches down to smooth the sheet.

What he finds instead is a stray necktie. It takes him a moment to realize it must have gotten lost in the covers while Rachel was playing her strange, drunken version of dress-up. He shakes his head and tosses the tie onto the nightstand before settling back down against the pillow and closing his eyes.

He can feel the damn thing hanging there. If it had eyes, it would be staring at him. If it had a mouth, it would be telling him to go check on Rachel.

Keith sits up with a sigh and swings his feet down onto the floor. He tells himself all he has to do is make sure Rachel is still breathing, and then he can go back to bed.

It takes a while for his body to agree to the plan, but he eventually gets up and heads down the stairs. A light in the kitchen catches his attention, and he changes course accordingly.

The good news is Rachel is breathing. The bad news is Rachel is also stripped down to her underwear and raiding his refrigerator.

Keith coughs. It's completely involuntary, but it makes Rachel jump back, a soda can clutched in her hand.

"Uh," Keith says. He tries very hard not to notice the color of her underwear.

Rachel blinks at him. She looks more confused than startled, and Keith thinks she is probably still drunk. "You're awake," she says.

Keith feels his head bob up and down, nodding without his permission. "You're... not wearing clothes." He frowns and thinks back a few hours. "Didn't I give you a shirt?"

"It was too big. I kept getting tangled, so I took it off." She shrugs. Keith wishes she wouldn't shrug.

"What about your other clothes? The ones you came here in."

She scrunches up her nose and moves toward the counter, where she sets down her drink. "They smelled."

They did smell, and Keith thinks the fact she can recognize that means she has sobered up at least a little. "You need something else to wear, kid?"

Rachel shakes her head. "I have a gym bag in the car." It's still too dark for Keith to see, but he hears her hand close around a key ring and pick it up from the counter. He doesn't understand until she starts to walk past him, heading toward the door.

"Wait!"

She stops. "What?"

Keith points to the table. "Sit. I'll get your gym bag. You just stay here and try not to take any more clothes off."

"I can get it," she grumbles, plunking herself down on the nearest chair. "It's not like it's cold out or anything."

Keith forces himself not to groan. Instead, he just holds out his hand. "Give me the keys."

"Fine." She drops them into his palm.

Keith makes a face and clenches the keys in his fist before heading out the door, where the temperature contradicts Rachel's assessment. He quickly unlocks the trunk and grabs the gym bag before returning to the kitchen, where he finds Rachel leaning against the counter, eating a cold piece of pizza. She is picking off one of the toppings and throwing the pieces into the sink.

"Here," he says, dropping the gym bag at her feet. He thinks about remarking on her inability to follow directions, but he knows it would be pointless.

"So, while you were gone, I was thinking," she says, setting the pizza on the countertop and bending over to unzip her gym bag. She takes out a black t-shirt and looks up at Keith. "Anyway, I was thinking, and you should come to a game sometime."

Keith rubs a hand over his face and takes a seat. "Kid, volleyball season's over, remember?"

Rachel rolls her eyes. "No duh." She pulls the shirt on over her head and hops to her feet. She's a little wobbly, but she tries to hide it by leaning casually against the counter. "I play basketball, too."

There's nothing funny about that, but Keith is exhausted, and he just laughs. "Of course you do," he says, shaking his head in amusement. The contrast between Rachel's skin and her black shirt draws his attention to her legs, and he just feels tired when he sighs and repeats, "Of course you do."

The way Rachel looks at him, he might as well be the one who is drunk.

He sighs again. "Go to sleep, kid," he tells her.

"Will you at least think about it?" she asks.

"Only if you go to sleep."

Rachel tosses her head back and groans in frustration. " _Fine_ ," she says with another roll of her eyes. She grabs her soda from the counter and stomps off toward the living room.

Keith rests his elbows on the table and hides his face in his hands. Between his fingers, he can see the hem of Rachel's shirt swaying against her hips.

Her underwear is the same color as his tie.

 

07\. November 18, 1989

"I need a favor," Rachel says, picking up her backpack and resting it on her lap. She digs through it, setting a calculus book on the table as she continues to push things around inside her bag.

Keith turns the book toward him and pages through it. "I really can't help you with this," he says, looking at the numbers and symbols. "I didn't understand it the first time around, and that was fifteen years ago."

"Not that." She sets a stack of papers on the table and puts the textbook back in her bag. "These. I need someone to proof-read them, and I thought since you write every day for your job and all..."

Rachel's handwriting is thick and heavy, leaving grooves in the looseleaf paper. The letters are tight and angled, sharp like she is, and Keith shuffles through the pages, raising an eyebrow at the word counts scribbled in the margins.

"They're for college," Rachel blurts out, like she didn't mean to tell him that. She sets her backpack on the floor as an excuse to look away. "There's stuff in them I don't want people to know."

"I'm people," Keith says, straightening the papers back into a tidy stack. He turns them face down and folds his hands on top of them. He wants her to know she has an out. "You know, I saw some scouts leaving that game in October."

"Look, if you don't want to read them..." She reaches for the papers, but Keith snatches them away.

He takes a ten dollar bill out of his pocket and slides it across the table. "Get some fries," he says.

Rachel gives him a sideways look. "Yeah, okay," she says, taking the money and walking over to the counter.

Keith unzips the front pouch of her backpack to get a pen, pretending not to see the rolling papers tucked into an interior pocket. He glances at Rachel, sitting on a stool and kicking her feet against the counter as she stares unseeingly toward the kitchen, before he uncaps the ballpoint pen and starts to read. The essays are short, taking up little more than the front sides of the papers, and he is nearly finished with the first one when he hears coins dropping into the jukebox with a metallic clink.

He looks up as an old Bob Seger song begins to play, and he sees Rachel standing by the jukebox, half-smiling to herself as she dances tentatively to a rhythm that doesn't quite match the music. The motions suit her, the way they are out of sync with and uninfluenced by her surroundings; she is lost in her thoughts, unselfconscious and unaware of the way she has caught the attention of Keith, of the waitress, of the old man at the counter and the young couple in the corner. The sight is strangely incongruous with the parts of her spilled across wrinkled looseleaf, and Keith has to look down and make sure the words are still there. They are, all of them, with Keith's own notes squeezed between the lines, and something in his stomach tightens with the realization that these stories of AIDS shelters and protests belong to that girl.

With a shake of his head, Keith turns back to the papers. Seger fades into The Knack as he finishes reading and the counter girl calls to Rachel, "Hey, hon, your fries are ready."

A moment later, Rachel comes bounding back to the table, a plate of ketchup-drenched fries in one hand and Keith's change in the other. Keith picks up a fry when she sets the plate on the table. "You spending my money on rock 'n roll, kid?"

Rachel ducks her head and blushes as she drops seven dollars and a fistful of change into Keith's waiting hand. "Sorry," she says, reaching for her backpack. "I can pay you back."

Keith shakes his head as he pockets the coins. "Don't worry about it," he says, sliding the bills across the table. "Reaganomics have been good to me. Keep it."

"Really?" Her fingertips rest lightly on the money, wanting to take it but expecting some sort of catch. "You're not gonna like what I spend it on."

"It's yours. I don't need to know what you spend it on."

Rachel grins at him and snatches up the money, tucking it in her backpack next to the rolling papers and pens. "How were the essays?" she asks, trying to sound disinterested while she busies herself with the zippers on her backpack. She reaches for the papers and taps them on the table, lining up their edges before cramming them into her backpack in a way that undermines any attempt at neatness.

"You can write," Keith says appreciatively, and he sees a smile starting to form around Rachel's eyes. "Look out for the word 'separate,' though. It's spelled a-r-a -- ERAs are for baseball. And you're a little iffy on the quotation marks, too, but other than that... You can write, kid. Where are you sending those?"

Rachel shrugs. "Places," she says, setting her backpack on the floor. "In-state, though. I'm not leaving."

"Good to hear." He offers her a twitch of a smile.

 

08\. December 9, 1989

He comes awake slowly, light flashing through his closed eyelids before the muffled sound of a laugh track convinces him to open his eyes. For a brief moment, he wonders if he rolled over on the remote, but soon realizes he is not alone. Rachel is next to him, her back against the headboard and her knees drawn up to her chest. She is chewing on her thumbnail and staring in the direction of the TV.

Keith squints against the steady blue light of a commercial's _call now to order_ screen. "Kid?"

She doesn't look at him, but she hums to indicate she heard him.

"What the hell are you doing in here?" His voice is gruff from sleep, and he knows he sounds more annoyed than curious. He isn't awake enough to figure out what his mood is; it's hard enough to haul himself into a sitting position.

Rachel doesn't seem to mind his tone. She shrugs distractedly. "Cable's out in the living room." She still doesn't look at him.

It's Keith's turn to hum as he considers her answer, wondering if it means something woke her up or something wouldn't let her fall asleep. She's sitting close to him, right in the middle of the bed, but her relative silence and refusal to look at him make it clear she has no intention of telling him what's wrong.

He rubs his face with both hands, and when he takes them away, the show is back from commercial. "Happy Days?"

"Yeah." Rachel sits up a little straighter and pulls her knees a little closer to her body, but the corner of her mouth is curving slightly upward. She has stopped chewing on her thumbnail and has switched to biting at the pad of her finger.

On screen, Fonzie snaps his fingers, drawing a crowd of young women, and Keith smiles to himself when Rachel shifts her weight and sighs. This is the first time he's seen her interested in a guy since the night she broke up with her boyfriend, and he isn't going to let this go. "So... the Fonz, huh?" he says casually, glancing sideways to see her reaction.

Rachel fidgets and frowns sharply. "What?"

Keith shrugs with one shoulder and hides a smile. "I should have figured you for the bad boy type."

That gets her to look at him. "I'm not the -- I don't have a... Wearing a leather jacket and getting all the girls doesn't make you a bad boy. It just makes you cool."

"Ah." He likes seeing her flustered, and he watches, staying quiet until she turns her attention back to the show. Then he grins to himself. "Rachel Fonzarelli's a good name."

Rachel grabs a pillow and uses it to hide her face. Keith thinks she says, "I don't like bad boys," but the pillow muffles her words into a mess of stuffy consonants.

"I thought you said he wasn't a bad boy."

Rachel smacks him in the head with her pillow. It doesn't wipe the grin off his face, but it does serve as the opening salvo in an all-out tug-of-war that ends with Rachel sprawled across Keith's chest, laughing into his skin.

"Not fair," she grumbles, and Keith has to agree. It isn't fair: her lips are brushing against his chest and he can feel her warm breath tickling his chest hair.

"You started it, kid." His fingers slip through her hair, smoothing out static from the pillow fight. "Not my fault you couldn't finish it."

Rachel snorts and wriggles against him. "Fine." She turns her head, hiding her face in the crook of her elbow. Her ear is pressed over his heart, and Keith is certain she can hear the way it's pounding as it pumps blood through his body -- too much of which is headed for his dick.

"Uh-uh," he says. "You want to sleep in here, fine, but I am not your personal pillow. Off."

Rachel sighs, mutters, and grunts, but eventually moves to the empty side of the bed. She steals two-thirds of the blankets, twisting them into a cocoon as she curls up on her side, her foot brushing against his shin. Her toes are cold, but the rest of her is warm, and the contact makes Keith shiver.

He tries to distract himself with baseball, with balls and strikes and walks and runs, but then it's onto the bases, onto sex and women and girls who shouldn't be in his bed. His erection is bordering on unbearable, so he folds back the covers and slides out of bed, wanting to hate himself for what he's about to do.

He locks himself in the bathroom like some nervous teenage boy with parents down the hall, and his hands shake as he fumbles with his pants in the dark. He wishes he had a skin mag, something to focus on, something to steer his mind away from Rachel, away from the memory of her in her underwear.

He comes with that image in his mind.

After that, hating himself turns out to be easy, and he cleans himself up hoping he will be able to look Rachel in the eye by morning. For now, he can't imagine getting back in that bed with her, and he grabs the pillow from the bedroom floor and heads downstairs.

 

09\. December 9, 1989

Rachel is sprawled across the bed, still fast asleep, when Keith sneaks into the bedroom and sets a McDonald's bag on the nightstand. The bag rustles when he reaches into it, and he glances at Rachel to make sure the noise hasn't woken her up.

She hasn't budged, and Keith watches her for a moment, taking in her parted lips and the steady rise and fall of her chest. He feels a pang of guilt that forces him to look away, and goes back to unpacking the bag on the nightstand.

He lifts the first styrofoam container out and pushes some books aside so he can set it down. He doesn't spare a glance when the bag rustles the second or third time he reaches inside, but when he pops the lids off their breakfasts, he sees Rachel grinning and biting her lip as she tries not to laugh at his lack of stealth.

"Faker." He throws a packet of grape jelly at her, and she laughs and opens her eyes when it lands on her chest.

"Oh, killer," she says, ripping the packet open as she sits up. She tilts her head back and squirts the jelly directly into her mouth. "I love this stuff."

"And good morning to you, too." Shaking his head, Keith reaches out and wipes a smudge of jelly from the corner of her mouth. He looks around for a napkin, but can't find one, and settles for sucking the jelly off his thumb. "All this time you had me buying you pancakes when I just could have bought you a jar of Smucker's."

Rachel shrugs, and her tongue darts out to lick the sticky residue from the corner of her mouth. "Cheap and easy," she says, reaching her arms toward the ceiling in a long, slow stretch, "that's me."

There's a receipt in his pocket for $3.89, and it makes Keith wince inwardly from guilt. "Easy?" He laughs and hands Rachel one of the Styrofoam trays. "Kid, you're about the most difficult 'easy' I've ever dealt with."

Her eyes widen as she tears open a package of plastic utensils. "That's high praise coming from the man who made being difficult into what appears to be a rather lucrative career." Fork poised over eggs, she pauses and cocks her head. "You're doing a good job with cheap, though. You couldn't have sprung for the breakfast with the pancakes?"

Keith sits down next to her and kicks his legs up onto the mattress. He takes a bite of his hash browns and shrugs. "I could've, but they wouldn't have had chocolate chips."

Rachel studies him for a minute, slowly chewing her scrambled eggs. "Yeah," she says after she swallows. "You don't seem like the kind of guy who keeps chocolate chips in his kitchen, so I guess it's for the best."

Keith wonders what that means, wonders if she knows guys who keep chocolate chips in their cupboards, guys who have kitchens of their own, but gets distracted as she fishes the television remote out from beneath the covers and turns on the Saturday morning cartoons, jumping rapidly back and forth between _Beetlejuice_ and _The Smurfs_. Her finger slips off the button on _The Smurfs_ , and she shrugs and trades the remote for her fork.

"So," she says, speaking with her mouth full this time. "Do I snore or something? Kick violently in my sleep, maybe?"

Keith bites into his biscuit and chews slowly. "What?" He can't decide if it's the biscuit that is so dry, or his mouth. He just wishes he'd bought something to drink.

"You slept on the couch." Rachel considers her assumption for a second, tilting her head as she thinks. "Or I guess you did, at least. You didn't sleep here, anyway -- even if I hadn't woken up alone in the middle of the bed, your pillow wasn't here. How come?"

Keith shrugs. "Didn't seem right." He is talking less about sharing a bed with her than about what he did in the bathroom. He wipes his hand on the top sheet and clears his throat. "You know, the television was working fine when I got out there."

"Huh," Rachel says. She doesn't bat an eye. "Isn't that funny."

 

10\. January 27, 1990

"Shower's yours," Keith says as he turns the corner and steps into the living room, knowing he will find Rachel sitting on the couch, her hair in a messy, pre-shower ponytail as she eats Cocoa Puffs and watches cartoons. She isn't alone, though: Dan is sitting beside her, scowling at the television.

Even if Keith had wanted to introduce Dan and Rachel, this is not how he would have done it. He swallows hard. "I see you've met Rachel."

"I have." Dan doesn't bother to hide the disapproval in his tone. "Can I talk to you? In the kitchen?"

Rachel leaps up from the couch. "Talk in here," she says. "I'm gonna shower." She leaves her cereal bowl on the coffee table, a few pieces of her breakfast still bobbing in the chocolaty milk, and Keith turns his head to watch her walk down the hall.

Dan turns off the television and gets to his feet. "Are you kidding me, KO?"

"I don't follow," Keith says, rubbing a hand over his face. From the way Dan crosses his arms, Keith can tell that was the wrong thing to say.

"That girl can't possibly be eighteen. What the hell is she doing answering your door at ten o'clock on a Saturday morning?"

Keith wishes Rachel had gone out with her friends last night instead of showing up at the studio. He wishes he could tell Dan about being the responsible adult who gave Rachel a ride home from a party and let her sleep it off on his couch. Instead, all he can say is, "It's not like that. We're friends."

The truth is a pathetic excuse to his own ears, and it must sound even worse to Dan. "You were just staring at her ass. You'll have to excuse me if I have a hard time believing 'it's not like that.'"

Keith takes a few steps into the room, trying to keep the volume of their conversation low. "Of course I was staring. She's -- you have eyes; you saw her. But she's _sixteen_. Looking is all I'm doing. It's all I've been doing for the past five and a half months."

Dan narrows his eyes. "You've been seeing her since _September_?"

"Jesus, Dan. You make it sound like I'm dating her."

"Out of curiosity, exactly how many dates _have_ you gone on in the past five and a half months?"

Keith grinds his teeth.

Dan snorts. "Yeah, okay. It's not like that." He shakes his head. "Look, KO, you have some of the worst luck with women, and if you were anybody else, anyone with better luck, I would _still_ be standing here and telling you this will end badly."

"If this had anything to do with her being..." Keith stops and shifts gears; he can't quite bring himself to refer to Rachel as a woman. He'll worry about what that means later. "This isn't a woman issue. I picked her out of the crowd at an A's game because I was looking for a fan interview. I thought she was a guy. Once I pulled my foot out of my mouth and my head out of my ass, she blew me away. You'd like her, too, if you gave her a chance."

"I'll pass, thank you." Dan pauses uncomfortably and clears his throat. "Keith, in all seriousness, she might not act like a kid, but she's sixteen. You could get in serious trouble here. I'm not going to tell you what to do, mostly because I know you won't listen, but at least try to remember that, would you?"

Keith opens his mouth to protest, but stops himself. "Yeah, sure," he says with a dismissive wave of his hand. "You gonna stick around awhile?"

"Nah, I'm gonna bounce. You and Jailbait have fun watching your cartoons or whatever it is you do. I'm in town 'til Wednesday, so I'll catch you later, all right?"

"I'll be here." It's hard to sound casual after a lecture like Dan's, and Keith doesn't care if he seems impatient when he says, "Need me to show you out?"

"I think I can find my way."

Once he hears to door close, Keith turns the television back on. Cartoons fill the screen, and Keith can feel himself scowling. It's the same face Dan was making, and Keith snorts at himself before changing channels. He barely has time to focus on what he sees before he hears Rachel's footsteps coming down the stairs.

"What was that about?" she asks, plopping down on the couch. She stops towel-drying her hair long enough to grab the remote and switch back to _Beetlejuice_.

"Couldn't tell you," Keith says, and the words are close to true. He forces himself not to look at her, to keep his eyes on the television instead. Rachel's t-shirts have a way of clinging after she showers, and today she's wearing white.

He clears his throat. "So, it's my birthday today."

Rachel smiles, her entire face brightening as she says, "Happy birthday," but her smile quickly falters, turning into a frown.

Keith can't help but frown back. "What? You don't want me to have a happy birthday?"

"No, it's just... I don't know how old you are." She drops her towel onto the coffee table, nearly knocking the cereal bowl onto the floor, and crosses her arms. "Like, I'm thinking about it, but I couldn't even guess."

It's all Keith can do not to sigh. "I'm thirty-one," he says, and he tries to ignore the way he suddenly feels every day of those thirty-one years. He forces himself to smile and nudges her bare foot with his own. "What do you say we get dressed, grab an early lunch, and then hit the movies?"

Rachel shrugs. "As long as you're buying, I say, 'Sounds good, birthday boy.'"

 

11\. February 10, 1990

Even though he can see Rachel's green Honda in the driveway, Keith triple-checks the house number before parking next to it. His palms are sweaty and he wipes them on his jeans, wondering if he can get away with honking instead of going to the door. He could do without getting any closer to her life, but he knows she would never let him live it down, so he forces himself to get out of the car and walk up to the door, where he can't decide between the knocker or the bell.

Before he makes up his mind, Rachel throws open the door.

"Were you seriously just going to stand there?" she asks, using one hand to rub her damp hair with a towel. She's barefoot, wearing jeans and a pajama shirt. "I mean, you're early and I'm not psychic, so if I hadn't heard the car door slam..."

Keith shrugs and rocks back on his heels, stuffing his hands into his pants pockets. "It's nice out."

Rachel rolls her eyes and opens the door wider. "Get in here."

He steps inside hesitantly, holding his breath as he crosses the threshold, then exhaling slowly once he is inside. He recognizes a pair of Rachel's still-tied sneakers tossed in a corner, the backs crushed from her stepping on them to toe them off. He can hear the distant voices of cartoons on the television and, when he looks up at the walls of the entranceway, he sees a collection of photographs hanging on the wall. There is a wedding portrait, and Keith supposes the couple must be Rachel's parents, just as he assumes the boy in the cap and gown must be her older brother. The little girl in a soccer uniform with white-blonde braids can only be Rachel, and it makes Keith's heart twist.

"Come on." Rachel turns down the hall.

"Where are we going?" Keith asks, following. He wonders how much he is supposed to notice about the rooms they walk past.

"Well, I'm not dressed yet, and I usually keep my clothes in my room, so that would be a safe bet."

There's a wooden sign hanging at eye-level on her door, the words "Rachel's Room" written in pink script and bracketed by two teddy bears wearing purple ribbons around their necks. It has an impersonal, mass-produced-to-look-handmade feel to it, unlike the big "Keep Out" sign tacked below it, which bears Rachel's handwriting.

She kicks the door open and tosses her wet towel onto the bed while Keith stands just outside.

"I don't know, kid," he says, peering around the doorframe. He's curious, but uncomfortable. "It looks like I'm not allowed in here." He nods toward the sign.

Narrowing her eyes, she steps over to the door and rips down her handmade sign. "You're not going to catch girl cooties," she says, crumpling the paper into a ball. "Besides, I've been in your room." She shoots the balled-up sign into a wastebasket near her desk, and it doesn't even brush the sides.

"Nothing but net," Keith says, pressing his lips together appreciatively. He leans against the doorjamb. "You going to shoot like that at the game?"

"Hell yeah," she says, picking up a hair elastic and stretching it over her hand. She reaches for her brush. "Do me a favor and get my uniform out of the dresser, okay? It's in the second drawer. Gym bag's on the bed."

That doesn't leave Keith much of a choice but to step into her room, and he is surprised by how different it is from the hall, by how unlike Rachel the room seems. The off-white carpet is plush, meant for bare feet and strange to walk on in shoes. The curtains and bedspread are frilly and purple, and the air smells sweet, like girly soap and shampoo. There are clear signs of the Rachel he knows, though, like the shelf full of trophies and the pile of t-shirts on the floor near the clothes hamper. He even finds a stack of comic books thrown on top of her dresser, and he glances at the titles before opening the second drawer, where he finds the shiny material of her basketball uniform sticking out from beneath a rumpled sweatshirt.

"So, who are you playing today?" he asks, opening up her gym bag and putting her uniform inside. She still needs her sneakers.

"Monarchs." Rachel is fighting with her puffy hair, dragging her fingers through it and trying to coax it into a ponytail, and Keith decides to let her focus rather than distracting her with questions about high school stats or the location of her shoes.

Tentatively, he steps over to the closet and opens the door. There is a Black Sabbath poster taped inside, and the floor is cluttered with sneakers and boots and the odd pair of dress shoes. In contrast, the hangers are filled with dress clothes, interspersed with an occasional pair of jeans. The tags are still dangling from the little black dress directly in front of him, and Keith reaches out to trail a finger along one of its thin straps, wondering what she bought the dress for.

"What are you doing?" Rachel's question is punctuated by the snap of the elastic she is twisting around her hair.

The sound startles Keith, and he jerks his hand away from the dress. "Just getting your shoes," he says and grabs her high-tops from the floor.

 

12\. March 30, 1990

The Friday before Rachel's birthday, he dresses in slacks and a button-down and drives twenty miles out of his way to meet Rachel after basketball practice. He pulls up ten minutes early, but still, she's already waiting for him, sitting on the sidewalk in the little black dress he remembers from her closet. Her bare legs are stretched out in front of her, and as Keith gets out of the car, he shakes his head at her casualness. He told her to dress up, but telling her how to behave is a dare he knows better than to take, so he just says, "Hey, kid," and offers a hand to help her up.

"Hey." She pulls herself to her feet, but Keith doesn't let go of her hand. He spins her around, smiling at how grown-up she looks, and his smile spreads into a grin when a patch of dirt on her dress shatters the illusion. He brushes it off with a quick swipe of his hand and twirls her around once more, dropping her hand mid-spin and letting momentum carry her until he catches her by the hips.

"Happy birthday, Rachel." He kisses her on the cheek, but she blushes and ducks away without a thank you, kicking at the sidewalk with the toe of her shoe.

"It's not even my birthday yet," she says. "I don't know why you're making me wear this thing." She grabs the hem of her dress in handfuls and stretches the skirt out and away from her body. It looks less like a curtsey and more like she wants to keep the fabric from touching her.

Keith sighs. "Because I thought girls your age liked to get dressed up and go places." He picks up Rachel's gym bag and slings it over his shoulder.

Rachel makes a face as she opens the car door. "Not when it means we have to shower in the locker room. I think the same soap scum's been in there since the sixties." She sits sideways in the passenger seat, feet on the curb and elbows on her knees, leaning forward to watch Keith put her gym bag in the trunk. "I'm not even sure the building's been around since the sixties -- they might have imported the soap scum. So you better appreciate the fact that I smell nice."

Keith laughs, grabbing Rachel's present before he slams the trunk shut. "To be honest, I didn't notice. What does nice smell like?"

"I don't know." Rachel brings the crook of her elbow to her nose and sniffs loudly. "Like something other than basketball and sweat." With her face pressed into her arm, she's distracted, and Keith takes the opportunity to crouch in front of her and slip her present onto her lap.

"Who says basketball and sweat don't smell good?" he asks, pretending he had nothing to do with the package that just appeared on her lap.

Rachel shrugs. "People who don't like sports, maybe." She tries to match Keith's phony innocence with some feigned disinterest, but he doesn't miss the way Rachel's index finger traces the seam in the wrapping paper. It's a little boy's wrapping paper, royal blue with sports equipment printed on it, and it makes Rachel smile tightly. "People who aren't us."

Keith hums and tilts his head toward the package. "You gonna open that thing or what?"

Rachel's smile twitches briefly upward and she tears the wrapping paper down the seam, revealing a nondescript gift box. She stares at it for a moment before lifting the lid and folding back the tissue paper.

Rachel bites her lip as she stares into the box, and Keith starts to worry he got her all wrong. He is about to backtrack, to apologize and tell Rachel he still has the receipt, but that's when he sees the tears shining in her eyes as she lifts the leather jacket from its box.

He knows what she'll say, but the silence is killing him. "You like it?" he asks.

The box slides onto the ground when she leans forward to hug Keith, her arms sliding around his neck. "Hell yes, I like it, you dork." She leans her head against his. "Thank you."

Keith rubs her back. "Good." He gives her a squeeze and pulls back from the hug, relieved to see her smiling despite her wet eyes. "Show me how it looks?"

Rachel pulls the jacket on in a hurry, shaking her hair free from the collar and tugging the sleeves into place. She lets Keith take a long look at her before she starts to fidget. "Well?" she asks, tucking her hands into the pockets and looking at the ground.

"It was made for you, kid."

 

13\. March 30, 1990

Keith is unlocking the car when inspiration hits. "Hey, kid," he says. "Heads up." He lobs the keys over the roof and hears a muffled jingle as Rachel catches them.

She looks down at the keys and then over to Keith. "You're letting me drive your Fiero?"

"Happy birthday." The briefest flash of a smile crosses her face, and although it never reaches her eyes, it's the best Keith has gotten out of her since they sat down in the restaurant. "You can even pick the music," he tells her, his eardrums already aching.

"Okay," she says, but they make it onto the city streets and past three traffic lights with the radio off and no words spoken. The silence is eating at Keith, making him fidget, and he turns on Rachel's favorite station, the one with the loud, angry rock and the DJ who mumbles when he bothers to speak.

She turns it back off when they get out onto the freeway, and Keith watches her grip the wheel with stiff arms and white knuckles.

"Relax," he says. "She's a fast one, but you can handle her."

Rachel nods and bites her lip. "I know." She reaches up and adjusts the rearview mirror, tilting it downward before pushing it back up. Her hands move closer on the steering wheel, leaving sweaty prints at ten and two. "There's something I need to say."

Keith laughs. "About time. You hardly said a word at dinner."

Rachel's fingers flex around the wheel and she steps on the gas, pushing the speedometer into the sixties, then letting the needle ease back down. She takes one hand off the wheel and curls it around her jacket sleeve before taking a breath.

"I'm gay." Her hand is still in a fist when she rests it back on top of the wheel. She keeps staring straight ahead. "No one knows."

Her strained voice makes something stir in Keith's chest, like his heart can't decide whether to constrict or swell. He's so proud of her for saying those words, and honored that she said them to him. But at the same time, his heart breaks for her, for the girl who kept and struggled with this secret, and for the woman whose life will be harder for it. He doesn't want that for her.

"Kid..." He reaches out to touch her wrist. "Rachel, kid, that's -- it's okay."

Her eyes squeeze shut for a second, and when she finally looks at him, her eyes are red and damp. Keith's hand hovers near the wheel, ready to steer if she needs it, but Rachel guides the Fiero onto the shoulder by herself, even shifting into first before setting the parking brake.

She mumbles an apology and wipes at her eyes, sniffling and hiding her face against the leather of her sleeve.

Keith doesn't know what to say, and he feels like a heel just watching as Rachel folds in on herself, her chest and shoulders jumping every time she fights back a sob.

"Hey," he says quietly. He thinks this is the tone people use for frightened animals, not teenage girls, but he stays with it and puts a hand on her shoulder. "Don't cry. You'll get snot all over your jacket."

Rachel tries to laugh, but instead she sobs, and the sound makes Keith flinch with his entire being. He thinks it might be the worst sound he has ever heard, and he sighs as he reaches for her. "All right, fine," he says. He brushes a strand of hair behind Rachel's ear and offers her a smile. "Cry if that's what you wanna do."

She snuffles loudly and presses her face into his shoulder. Half her syllables are muffled when she says, "I don't wanna be a lesbian."

"It's okay," he says again, and he'll let her decide what he means by it. He just needs to say something.

"No, it's not." She sits back and looks at him with puffy eyes and an expression of utter misery and total earnestness. Her chin trembles as she says, "I hate softball."

Keith can't stop himself: he laughs. It makes Rachel pout, and Keith squeezes her shoulder. "Oh, kid..." He shakes his head to chase away the smile forming on his lips. "You hate softball?"

Rachel takes a deep breath. "I know. I mean, I love volleyball, and basketball, and swimming, and, when I was little, I used to play soccer, and you know I really, really love baseball, so you would think I--"

"Stop." Keith doesn't keep tissues in the car, so he grabs a handful of paper napkins off the dashboard and hands her one. "I'm not an expert, but I don't think softball's the thing you have to like to be a lesbian."

Rachel blushes and looks away, crumpling the napkin in her hand. "I know. It's just... softball's less scary, I guess."

Keith gives a heavy sigh. "I don't know, kid," he says, shaking his head. "Fastpitch is pretty terrifying. Compared to that, girls are... Okay, yeah, you're screwed."

Rachel laughs her first genuine laugh of the night. "You are so not helping," she says with a broad grin, but she quickly covers it with a serious expression. "Promise me you won't tell anyone, Keith."

He wants to answer with a joke, to get her smiling again by swearing her hatred of softball is safe with him, but he can see the worry and distrust in her eyes. He wants it gone. "Promise."

 

14\. April 20, 1990

Rachel is lying on her back on his couch, hands behind her head and legs kicked up in the air, watching her untied shoelaces sway. "Do you remember Paul?" she asks, shaking her foot and making her shoelace dance.

Keith runs the name through his mind, sorting through a mental Rolodex of her friends' names. He finds Tammy and Leah and Eric and Tim, but no Paul, so he makes the most absurd guess he can. "Paul O'Neill?"

"The idiot on the Reds, the one who kicked the baseball?" She laughs, but it's a shallow, phony laugh, and she quickly follows it with a sigh. "No, I mean my... the guy I was with at the A's game."

"The guy you broke up with," Keith says, and Rachel drops her legs onto the arm of the couch, losing a sneaker in the process.

She wrinkles her nose. "The guy who wants to get back together." She kicks off her other shoe. "What am I supposed to tell him?"

Keith sits forward in his chair. "You don't want to tell him no?"

"I don't know." She rolls her eyes and shakes her head at herself as she sits up, resting her feet flat on the floor. "He asked me to the prom, Keith." She scrunches up her nose again, failing to hide a sniffle.

Keith is acutely aware of all the reasons Rachel should not be looking to him for advice. "Look, kid," he says, sounding like he has all the answers, but he runs out of words and ends up sighing in frustration.

Rachel doesn't seem to notice. She falls backward, slumping against the back of the couch and drawing her legs up to her chest. She's staring straight at her kneecaps when she mumbles, "I don't know what I meant when I told you I was gay."

The way she is tucked into herself makes her look impossibly small and vulnerable, and something in Keith's chest pulls tight. He thinks about reaching for her, but instead sits next to her, clapping his hand down over her knee as his hip presses against hers. "You don't have to know everything," he says.

Rachel looks at him, her head tilted sideways, and sharp lines crease her forehead as she frowns. "Shouldn't I at least know myself? Shouldn't I have that much figured out?"

Keith chuckles, brushing a finger against Rachel's temple to chase away her frown. "Boy, you don't pick the easy things, do you?" he says, his thumb lingering on her cheekbone. He smiles at her, a smile as tight as the feeling in his chest, and kisses her forehead. "But you're ahead of the curve on this one, kid. There are people twice, three times your age who haven't figured themselves out yet."

She doesn't smile back. "Have you?" she asks, her voice soft.

He thinks he owes her honesty, but not enough to scare her away, so he just shakes his head. "We can talk about my existential crises some other time."

It's not the answer she wants, and she turns away, looking down at the carpet and letting her hair fall across her face.

Keith reaches out and pushes her hair back, his fingers slipping through its length. "Your hair's getting so long," he mumbles, before offering her another, more genuine smile. "You'd look good in the dress."

Rachel blushes. Her voice is too quiet when she confesses, "I really want it." She ventures a glance at Keith. "I don't... I don't just mean the dress. I mean the whole night."

"It sounds like there's a 'but' in there."

Rachel is silent for a moment, biting her lip and wiggling her foot. She crosses her arms before she says, "But I don't want it with Paul."

That makes him smile, not because he wants her to be miserable, but because it gives him something to work with, a way to tease. "So?" He bumps her with his shoulder, like he can nudge the secret out of her. "Who do you want to go with?"

Not even his waggling eyebrows brighten Rachel's expression, and she just shrugs in a way that could mean she doesn't know or won't say. "Who'd you go with?" she asks instead.

"I didn't."

The simple answer catches Rachel's attention, and she sits up a little straighter and turns to face him, her head cocked to the side. "How come?"

"I was sixteen when I graduated." When he says it, he realizes it doesn't make as much sense as it once did, and Rachel is quick to call him on it.

"So? I was sixteen until a month ago." Her jaw moves as she thinks about it, and then a grin spreads slowly across her face. "Girls didn't like you." She presses her tongue into her cheek. "I'm the first teenage girl who could stand you."

Keith harrumphs, although it's mostly for show. There's a lot of distance between him and his senior year of high school. "You don't have to sound so delighted."

"Sorry." She rolls her eyes and tries to hide her grin, but only manages to dial it back to a smirk before she flutters her eyelashes and says, "Well? You wanna go to prom with me, Keith?"

The teasing invitation makes Keith's face feel warm, and he thinks he might have overestimated how far he is from high school. "And ruin your chance of being voted prom queen? Never." When she sticks her tongue out at him, he does it right back. "Besides, my tux is still at the cleaner's from New Year's."

Rachel gives him a dubious stare. "New Year's was four months ago."

"I sweat a lot."

"Gross." Rachel pulls a face and flops back against the cushions. "You're right. I better go with Paul if I want a shot at that crown."

Keith wishes he didn't hate hearing her say that.

 

15\. May 4, 1990

She looks like a princess standing on his porch in a pale blue gown, and it takes Keith ten long seconds to stop staring and let her inside. He doesn't say a word as she walks past, just watches as she makes a beeline for the couch, sitting down and hiking up her dress so she can unfasten the straps on her high-heeled shoes. She drops them onto the floor with a thud, her bright nail polish catching Keith's eye as she flexes her toes.

"Prom was so lame," she says, leaning her head back against the couch, wincing when it hits the cushion. Reaching behind her, she plucks a dozen or so pins from her hair and drops them onto the end table. When she drags her fingers through her hair, they catch in a knot, a stray bobby pin tangled in the center. She swears under her breath and tries to pull it free.

Wordlessly, Keith sits down next to her, batting her hand away. He takes over the task of unsnarling her hair.

"Thanks." She sighs tiredly. "You know, according to the folklore, I'm supposed to be getting drunk right now and losing my virginity in the back seat of someone's car."

"And yet here you are," Keith says. Her hair smells faintly of hairspray, and the pin is caught in a hard, sticky knot. He's trying to be gentle, but he can hear hair break as he works to free the pin.

"Here I am," she agrees, flinching when he pulls too hard. Keith mumbles an apology. "And since your car doesn't have a back seat and I don't have my virginity, I thought maybe the least you could do is get me drunk."

"You shouldn't drink so much," he says casually, combing his fingers through her hair, loosening the bottom edge of the knot before he takes his hand away. He stands up and shakes off the loose, broken hairs that cling to his fingers, watching them reflect the lamplight as they fall to the floor. "And I shouldn't enable you. But in the name of preserving the mythos of prom night..."

Rachel smiles up at him, looking sweeter and more innocent than she is. "You're just trying to make up for the inferiority of your car," she teases. "It's working, by the way."

"I thought you liked my car," he says, walking toward the kitchen. Behind him, he hears the material of her dress move and the couch springs squeak as she makes herself more comfortable.

"I love your car. I just don't think you have a clue how to drive her," Rachel says, her voice competing with the droning hum of his refrigerator. "You need to get her out on the freeway and have some fun with her. She can take it."

Keith shakes his head and pours two shots of Jack into mismatched glasses. The bottle of supermarket-brand cola hisses when he breaks the seal. "Maybe the car can, but I can't. I'm too old for that crap," he says as he pours the soda, and he hears her laugh. He sighs and picks up the drinks. "What?"

"You wouldn't have her if you thought that," Rachel says while Keith walks back into the room. She's leaning against the arm of the couch, her legs stretched across the full length of the seat, and he hands her the shorter glass. She takes a sip and scrunches up her face, looking up at him. "Is there even any booze in this?"

He makes a face right back at her. "Move your legs." He nudges her with the back of his hand. Once Keith sits down, Rachel swings her feet into his lap. The straps from her dress shoes have left red marks crisscrossing her skin, and Keith outlines the marks with his finger. "I've had the Fiero for four years now. Maybe the idea appealed to me at first, but now..."

Thoughtfully, Rachel shakes her head, the rim of her glass pressed against her mouth. She rolls the glass along her lower lip as she speaks. "I don't think you feel that way," she says. "I'm not even sure you want to. It's just that you're thirty-one years old, and society says you should ditch the sports car and grow up. It's all such bullshit, Keith. The world at large shouldn't get to dictate what you want."

Keith takes a long, slow sip of his drink as he considers her words. "What are we talking about again?" he asks offhandedly, not because he's forgotten, but because he thinks he might be reading too far into what Rachel is saying.

She looks at him with a raised eyebrow. "I'm talking about cars," she says. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Right," Keith says, but he saw the glimmer in her eye, the flash of delight when she realized he was onto her. "Cars."

 

16\. May 4, 1990

The VCR clock tells Keith he has been watching the ice in his glass melt for twenty-three minutes, and he wonders what could be taking so long. Rachel is supposed to be washing her face and changing into her pajamas, but Keith is beginning to think he might have lost her to sleep. He sloshes his watery drink around in the glass and downs the last swallow before heading upstairs to check on her.

He expects to find her passed out on the bed, trying to weasel her way off the couch for the night. Instead, when he comes upon the doorway, what he finds takes his breath away. He knows he shouldn't, but he leans against the frame and watches Rachel lower the zipper on her dress and let it fall to the floor.

He should go back downstairs, pour himself another drink, and try to forget how sobriety feels. He shouldn't stand here and watch Rachel's blonde hair brush against her shoulder blades and her back muscles slide beneath her skin. He shouldn't wonder why he didn't notice the bright red of her cotton briefs showing through the pale blue of her dress.

"I know you're there," she says, hesitating before she turns around. It's not like the night in his kitchen; it's not like the vision that replays in his dreams. This time, her lack of self-consciousness isn't driven by liquor; there is none of that casualness here. It's been replaced by intent.

"It's okay that the Fiero doesn't have a back seat," she says, reaching for his hand. He thinks his palms might be sweaty, but he lets her lead him to the bed. When she kisses him, their fingers still entwined, her lips are sweet with lipgloss and cola. "This is going to be better."

He ends up on his back, one arm tucked behind his head as he watches Rachel's underwear drop to the floor. He can't remember his name.

She unbuttons his jeans and it's funny, almost, how her hand on his cock switches his brain back on.

"Condom," he says. They're in the bathroom. He doesn't know why he keeps them so far from the bed.

"Got one." Rachel leans over him to grab the Trojan off the nightstand, and Keith catches her by the waist, holding her there. Her breasts are right there, right over his face, and he presses his teeth gently into her skin as he steals a taste.

She laughs and flits away, tearing into the foil package as she sits back. Keith barely registers the condom rolling onto his dick before Rachel's body surrounds him.

"God," he says, a laugh caught up in a gasp. "Kid..."

She grins at him, and then he's turning them over, trying to find a rhythm with his fingers and his hips, but she's impatient, pushing his hand away and setting her own pace. Keith knows this can't be working for her, knows she can't be anywhere close with the way she won't let him catch up, but _he's_ close, too close to do anything about it, and he comes between ragged breaths, wishing he could feel her skin as he collapses on top of her, panting against her neck.

He only means to take a second, but it must be more like a minute before he can hoist himself up, kissing her forehead as he pulls out. "Hold on," he whispers, and he kisses her lips, her throat, her chest. Her hands slide into his hair as he nuzzles her stomach, and he moves lower.

"Keith," she breathes, and he grins as his mouth slides over her. She gasps, her hips rising off the mattress as her fingers tug at his hair. "Keith," she says again. "Keith, stop."

It makes him freeze, makes him go still, raises goosebumps on his skin. Slowly, he sits back, his lips and tongue still forming the question when Rachel smiles at him and shakes her head.

"We should go to sleep," she says, turning onto her side and tucking her hands beneath the pillow. She curls in on herself just a little, and Keith tries not to notice the way she's facing the wall, her back to his side of the bed.

He lies down next to her and stares at the ceiling, wondering what the hell he just did.

 

17\. May 5, 1990

The first rays of sunlight peek through the blinds and Keith grunts, rolling over and putting his back to the window. It's enough to make Rachel stir and sigh behind him, and Keith's breath catches in his throat. He doesn't know what to say to her, what to do, and a nervous tingle settles into the small of his back. He holds his breath, waiting for her to move or speak or do anything to set the tone.

She doesn't even wake up.

Keith wishes he could feel relief, but, instead, there's just a slightly less urgent sense of dread. Sooner or later, she is going to wake up, and the only thing Keith can do is avoid waking her himself, so he slides carefully out of bed. He feels almost grateful that he doesn't have to untangle himself from her limbs.

The jeans he didn't quite sleep in are dirty, and he stands beside the bed and strips them off. He feels guilty and ashamed, like he's hiding something when he stuffs them into the hamper and pulls on a clean pair of sweats.

Rachel's prom dress is still on the floor by his feet, her cotton underwear tossed carelessly on top, and Keith can see too much of her bare back while she sleeps curled on her side, the sheet wrapped around her hip. He shakes his head, trying to forget how that skin feels, but its softness and warmth are burned into his memory.

He turns away, grabbing the cordless phone from the nightstand before he leaves the room, already dialing with his thumb.

Keith listens to the ring as he walks down the stairs, his heart pounding in his chest. Part of Keith hopes his call will go unanswered; part of him wonders why he is doing this. There is nothing this phone call can make better.

"Hello?" Dan picks up as Keith sits on the couch, staying close to the edge.

"Dan. Hey." Keith's voice is tired and thick, almost unrecognizable, so he clears his throat. "Keith."

Dan chuckles. "Sounds like you had a hell of a night," he says, his tone expectant, almost proud. Keith knows he's waiting for the details.

Keith swallows. "You could say that."

The silence on the other end of the line tells him Dan has picked up on his uneasiness.

Keith passes the phone from his right hand to his left. "I slept with Rachel."

There's a clock on the wall, and Keith listens to it tick out six interminable seconds before Dan responds. "You slept with Jailbait?"

Keith can't think of any words to replace the miserable groan that is stuck in his throat, and he's glad that Dan doesn't give him enough time to respond.

"Jesus, KO, what did I tell you?" Dan says. "I told you it would end badly, and you said, no, no, it's not like that, and yet here you are, calling me at nine -- no, six, six o'clock your time, to tell me you slept with your sixteen-year-old."

"She's seventeen." Keith isn't sure if that's a defense or a correction.

"Oh, well, then, if she's seventeen," Dan says, and Keith can hear the rolled eyes that accompany Dan's sarcasm. "This isn't the amateur draft, Keith. You can't just call them up from high school. This could be a career-ender, not to mention, you know, a jailable offense."

"Thank you, Dan. Your support is touching." It's not the consequences that set him on edge; it's not the fear of losing his job or landing in prison. It's the thought of Rachel regretting last night enough to tell someone about it. "She wouldn't do that."

Dan snorts. "You think? Do I really need to remind you about your total lack of judgment when it comes to this girl?"

Keith is quiet, his jaw clenched, and the silence makes Dan change his tone.

He sighs. "Is she still there?"

"She's asleep," Keith answers.

"Well, get off the phone, you dummy, and think of what you're gonna say to her. Not just because she owns your ass now, but because she's a good kid and doesn't deserve to see your ugly mug first thing in the morning."

Keith doesn't quite laugh, but he manages a smile. "A good kid, Dan?"

"Hey, I'm just going by what you've told me," he says. "Good luck."

He hangs up before Keith can say another word, and Keith takes the phone away from his ear slowly, turning it over in his hands several times. He sets it on the coffee table and stares at it for a long moment before hauling himself to his feet with a sigh. He only has until the top of the stairs to figure out what he's going to say.

The walk back up is faster than the walk down, and he hesitates outside the bedroom, his hand hovering over the knob. He doesn't remember closing the door when he left, and the knob feels strange when he takes it in his hand. Still, he turns it, and opens the door.

His heart sinks. The bed is empty, and Rachel left her dress on the floor.

 

18\. August 10, 1990

She's waiting for him when he leaves the station, and it's just like that first night last September: the back against the streetlight, the hunched shoulders, the shirtsleeves pulled over hands. It's Rachel, and she's waiting for him, staring up the street with practiced disinterest.

Keith shoves his hands into his pockets and walks slowly toward her. He doesn't know what to say to break the months of silence, and he stops a few feet away, standing in the middle of the sidewalk.

Rachel turns toward him and smiles, but it's uncertain, nervous. "Hey," she says. "I was going to wait by your car, but I couldn't find it. Did you walk or something?"

Keith looks past her, his eyes settling on the flyers taped to the pole. Someone's cat is missing. Next to it, a band had a gig last Tuesday, and above it, a college student wants to sell his car. Keith sighs and looks away, glancing down at the ground and his black dress shoes. "I don't -- I don't have the Pontiac anymore," he says. It feels like a confession, and he doesn't know why he feels so ashamed. He squares his shoulders. "I sold it. About three weeks ago."

Rachel stares at him, tilting her chin down as she eyes him. "You sold it?" The muscles near her eyes tighten into the beginnings of a frown. She looks hurt and confused, and her words are sharper, more demanding, the next time she speaks. "Your Fiero. You sold your Fiero?"

"Yeah." He scratches his temple, rubs his jaw. "I mean, I got a new car. An Eighty Eight. It's not like..." Rachel's posture goes rigid while he speaks, and he lets the sentence die with a shrug.

"Wow." She blinks in disbelief before glancing up the street toward her car, and Keith can't tell if she's trying to hide her emotions or make a point, like she thinks he might have sold her Honda while they were standing there. She's still looking away when she takes a shaky breath and tucks her hair behind her ear. "I... okay, then. I guess -- I don't know; I'm just being stupid. I mean, this doesn't change anything." She pauses to wet her lips and change her tone. "So you show me your new ride and then we go get something to eat, right?"

Keith turns toward the parking garage. "Not tonight, kid," he says, watching her reaction from the corner of his eye, full of equal parts curiosity and dread.

She turns her whole body toward him. "What?"

"I have a date." He is going for matter-of-fact, but the words sound smug when they leave his mouth. He feels himself rock back on his heels in satisfaction, like he's trying to impress one of the guys.

Rachel laughs at him, a hard, short laugh that reminds Keith he has never truly impressed her. "You have a _date_?"

"Is that a problem?" He knows it is, and he knows he likes that too much. "You've been gone for three months, kid. Did you think my life was going to stop?"

Rachel crosses her arms and looks away, her lips pressed tightly together.

"I couldn't sit at home and wait for you to show up."

"You could have shown up," she says, turning back to him, flinging her arms out. "You know where I live; you know where I went to school and played sports. Your colleagues, they showed part of my graduation speech on your news channel, and you didn't even... you didn't anything."

She doesn't know how right she is. He didn't even watch it. He couldn't, not when he still opened his closet every morning to find her dress hanging there, reminding him why she's been gone.

Rachel shakes her head and crosses her arms, and the anger is gone from her voice when she says, "It's Friday night, Keith. It's Friday night and it's summer and I graduated and I'm going to college soon. We're supposed to -- I don't know. We're supposed to do what we always do on Fridays. You're not supposed to have a date."

Keith shrugs. "I don't know what you want from me, kid. I have a date. I can't do anything about it, and the longer we stand here, the later I get."

She rolls her eyes and waves him off as she turns away and begins walking toward her car. "Whatever. Have fun on your date."

 

19\. August 11, 1990

His doorbell rings at ten to four, and he turns on the light to find Rachel sitting on the porch railing, bent over backwards as she looks up at the stars in the night sky. She screws up her face, squinting under the sudden onslaught of the porch light, and Keith unlocks the door.

"Rachel, what are you doing?" he asks tiredly, holding open the storm door to let her inside. From the few steps she takes, Keith can tell how heavily she's been drinking, can even guess that it was tequila, which he knows has a special way of kicking her ass. Instead of watching her stumble toward the living room, he scoops her up in his arms. With her so close, he realizes the smell of pot overpowers that of alcohol, and he shakes his head. "Jesus, kid, I can't believe you drove here like this."

"I didn't smoke," she says, hiding her face against his neck, and Keith tries to ignore the guilt rumbling low in his stomach. "I just -- I tried calling, but you didn't answer."

Keith lays her on the couch and brushes her hair back from her forehead. "I told you, I had a date," he says gently, sitting on the cushion by her feet. He avoids looking at the blinking light on his answering machine.

"Right, right, right," she mumbles, the words rolling together. She turns onto her side, facing the back of the couch and hiding from Keith. "A date and an Oldsmobile. You're a grown-up. A grown-up with a boring, grown-up car with a boring, grown-up name."

"Hey, my car's not that boring." He pokes her in the side. "It talks."

She turns to look at him suspiciously. "It talks?" Her eyes narrow further. "What does it say?"

Keith starts unknotting her shoelaces. "It says Rachel shouldn't drink tequila." He pulls one shoe off her foot and drops it onto the floor. He coughs and waves his hand in front of his nose. "It also occasionally comments on the stench emanating from your feet."

Rachel giggles. "My feet don't smell," she says, clumsily trying to wave her foot in front of Keith's face.

He catches her by the ankle and holds her foot still as he removes her sock. "Of course not," he says apologetically. "It's just that you're still wearing Tuesday's socks." He throws the balled-up sock onto her chest, and Rachel bats it aside before regarding him seriously.

"Your car doesn't say I shouldn't drink tequila." The drunken pride in her voice has a childlike earnestness to it, like she put a great deal of thought into reaching what would ordinarily be an obvious conclusion. She narrows her eyes at him again. "How'd you know I was drinking tequila?"

Keith smiles at her as he strips off her other sock. "Magic." He drops the sock onto her shoes and tickles the bottom of her foot, making her squirm and jerk her leg away. He grabs her other foot, holding but not tickling, and he leans in, dropping his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "And my car told me."

"I'm not that gullible." Rachel rolls her eyes and pushes him away with a snort, and Keith is amazed that she can manage words like "gullible" when she's three sheets to the wind. "Your car couldn't have told you -- you've been in here the whole time."

Keith just laughs. "Your logic is impeccable," he says, letting go of her foot. He picks up her hand and brushes at the skin below her index finger. "You still have salt on your hand from doing shots."

"Oh." Rachel laughs and licks it off, wrinkling up her nose before she smiles. "Needs tequila." She wipes her hand on her jeans and tilts her head, speaking with complete sobriety when she asks, "Why'd you sell your Fiero, Keith? She was beautiful."

He traces the sharp protrusion of Rachel's anklebone, creating an excuse to avoid her eyes. "I took her out like you said I should. Turned out she was too fast for me." He pats her foot and stands up, taking the blanket off the back of the couch and laying it over her. "And because sometimes society's right and you've got to give up the sports car. Go to sleep, kid."

 

20\. August 11, 1990

Squinty-eyed and disheveled, Rachel drags herself into the kitchen moments after Mr. Coffee first hisses and gurgles, and Keith bites the inside of his cheek when she gives the noisy coffeepot a dirty look.

"Morning, sunshine," he says.

Rachel collapses into the nearest chair, crossing her arms and tucking her chin against her chest. "I hate tequila."

Keith smiles as he stacks frozen pancakes on a plate and puts them in the microwave. "I'm surprised you remember tequila."

The sound of the microwave door closing makes Rachel wince. "You got a new car." Her voice is uncertain as she works through her memories. "Does it... is it possible it talks?"

"It does." Chuckling, Keith opens the cabinet door and takes out two coffee mugs. He fills the oversized Garfield mug to the brim for Rachel and keeps the chipped KTLA mug for himself. "It doesn't, however, talk about tequila," Keith says, setting the mug in front of Rachel.

The reference to the finer points of last night's conversation goes over Rachel's head, and she makes a noise of feigned comprehension as she leans forward to slurp coffee from the mug without picking it up. She rests her front teeth on the edge of her cup, too tired to hold her head up.

"You had a date." She sounds more certain of herself now. "How was it?"

"Fine." The date wasn't fine; the date was two hours of pretending to give a damn about his dinner companion while his mind was on Rachel, wondering about her reaction to his date, worrying where she had stormed off to, wishing he were eating diner food with her.

Rachel hums thoughtfully and takes another slurp of coffee. "How come I don't see her anywhere?"

It's not the question he was expecting, and he laughs uncomfortably. "I don't know. How come I didn't see you?"

"What?"

This isn't the conversation he planned on having. He was trying to tease her, trying to dodge her question, but now that he's put this out there, he needs to see it through. He swallows hard. "The morning after -- after..."

"Oh," Rachel says, and Keith is glad he's not the only one caught off guard by the turn this conversation has taken. She blinks at him with those brown eyes. "After I fucked you."

The words hit him hard, make him flinch. "Don't say that."

"Why? It's what it was; there's nothing wrong with that." She shrugs and drops her eyes to her coffee, frowning into the cup. "Is there?"

With a sigh, Keith pulls out a chair. He angles it toward her and sits. "Hey," he says quietly, trying to make her look at him. He's afraid to touch her, so he hooks a finger around the handle of her coffee mug. "Why'd you leave?"

Rachel bites her lip. "I was..." Her jaw trembles, and she clamps her mouth shut on the words before inhaling deeply and holding the breath in her lungs. Slowly, she lets it out. "I didn't know what you were going to think."

Keith frowns. "About...?"

Her jaw twitches again and there is an almost imperceptible shake of her head. "Of me."

He sees the vulnerability in her eyes and hears the misery in her voice, but he doesn't understand. "What could I think of you?"

"You want the list?" She laughs, nervous, and glances upward, like she is trying to recall something she memorized. "That I was ugly. That I was bad in bed. That I was a slut. That I was wrong about being gay, that I was trying not to be gay, that--"

"Stop." He would have stopped her sooner, would have stopped her before she started, but her little laugh put a lump in his throat and stole his voice. "I wouldn't," he says, but Rachel looks at him like she can see right through him, like she could name every woman he ever thought those things about.

He tries to make it better. "Not about you."

She looks like she might believe him.

"Can I tell you what I think?" He sees her eyes flash with doubt and goes on without waiting for her to answer. "I think you're a good kid. I think I got lucky the day I met you and luckier the day you came to yell at me. I think the smartest thing I ever did was buy you pancakes that night, even though that means the smartest thing I ever did was your idea. I think sometimes you over-think things and sometimes you under-think them, but those times average each other out. But mostly I think I'm the last person who's in any position to judge you for either of those things, so don't ever worry what I think, all right?"

Rachel's lower lip trembles and she swipes a hand under her eye, brushing away a tear that isn't there. Her throat moves when she swallows, and then she cracks a grin and says, "I know you were trying to make me feel better, but you just started a whole lot of sentences with 'I think' before telling me not to care what you think, so now I'm just confused."

Keith laughs and claps her on the shoulder. "I have faith in you, kid; you'll figure it out. Now, how about those pancakes?"

 

21\. September 22, 1990

Keith looks up from his tea to see Rachel stroll into the diner and pause to grab a handful of crayons from a basket by the register. She sets them on the table as she slides into her seat, and Keith smirks at her and says, "Judging from the crayons and the paint in your hair, I can only assume you're taking a remedial art class this semester."

Rachel makes a face at him. "It's not paint. It's dye."

Keith looks at the crayons and picks up one labeled _cerulean_. Reaching across the table, he holds it up to her hair. "It's the same color as this crayon."

"It's electric blue," she corrects, snatching the crayon and scribbling a mark on her napkin. "It was supposed to be brighter, but I didn't want to bleach it."

" _You_ did that?"

Rachel nods and grins, grabbing the collar of her t-shirt and tugging it away from her neck to peer down the front of it. "I have blue streaks all over me," she says, but it's a point of pride, not a complaint. "The shower I used was speckled blue for days. It was so cool. I think I'm gonna do purple next."

Keith gives her a sideways look and briefly considers asking why she has decided to forgo natural hair colors, but he decides the answer will probably just give him a headache. "I ordered you pancakes," he says instead.

"Awesome. Thanks." She flips over her advertisement-covered placemat to reveal its blank side before holding up a crayon. "Don't you want to know why I took these?"

"You're sure you're not majoring in kindergarten art?"

"No," Rachel says, dragging out the word as she draws a line with black crayon. She looks up and smiles broadly. "I'm coming out."

Keith frowns. "It's not that I'm not happy for you, but I don't see the connection."

"Well, I can't just tell everyone individually," she says, turning the dark line into a block letter. "That would take forever. There are, like, thirty people on my floor. I thought about standing by the elevator all day making out with a girl, but the only other lesbian on the whole campus is an upperclassman who doesn't know I exist. Yet."

Keith raises an eyebrow. "Yet?" He smirks. "Do we have a little crush? Are we trying to grab her attention?"

"Please don't ever use the patronizing 'we' again. It's creepy," Rachel says, still drawing. She has an A and two Ts on the paper. "And, no, I don't and I'm not. I've been doing more than okay for myself even though no one else wants to cop to being a dyke."

Keith winces at the word and glances around the diner. "Kid, you really shouldn't say--"

"It's only a bad word if you let it be," she says, finishing a letter E. She's writing the word _ATTENTION_. "I like it. It's political. And if I use it, no one can hurt me with it." She adds the next two letters to her drawing before she continues talking. "Anyway, the kissing thing wouldn't work because I'd have to find someone else who wanted to be out, so I decided I'd make posters. There's always obnoxious trash talk and rumors written on the bathroom stalls, so, since I'm not really into permanently defacing school property, I figured I'd make posters that looked like someone was spreading terrible rumors, but I'd sign my name at the bottom. Even if people think the signature's fake, the news'll still spread like crazy. Gossip always does."

She's finished drawing her block letters, so she looks up and grins. "It's brilliant, right?"

Keith bites the inside of his lip and takes a sip of his tea. "You know you have my support."

Rachel's grin collapses into a frown and she blinks at him. "But?"

"But don't you think there are better ways to do this?"

"You know, I thought about that," Rachel says, picking up a red crayon. It's well-used, and she has to peel back the wrapper before she can begin to color in her letters. "I really did. And the truth is, I don't think there's a good way to do it. No matter what, there are a lot of people who are going to have a problem with who I am, and I can either find out who they are all at once or one at a time. It's like ripping off a Band-Aid, and I can either make it hurt a lot really fast or a little bit for a long time."

Keith sighs and studies her face. He wishes someone would find her a Band-Aid that didn't hurt.

"All right," he says, moving his cup of tea to the side. He flips over his placemat and picks up a crayon. "Just tell me what I'm writing."

 

22\. September 30, 1990

The phone startles him out of a dead sleep, and he nearly knocks it off the nightstand as he gropes for it. "Do you know what time it is?" he growls into the receiver, not bothering to sit up. If he has his way, it's going to be a short conversation.

"No," a voice says miserably, and it takes a full second for Keith to realize it's Rachel. His heart beats faster, and he wants to apologize for yelling and then yell some more, but she doesn't give him a chance.

"I need a ride, Keith, please; I'll do anything if you just come get me. I went to this thing and I don't know why or what but I took something, and I want to get out of here and I shouldn't drive and I can't call my parents and, Keith, please, I don't want to be here anymore."

She's on the verge of hyperventilating, and Keith immediately gets out of bed and starts struggling into yesterday's clothes. "It's okay," he tells her, hoping he sounds believably calm. "Just slow down. Where's 'here,' Rachel?"

"The Castro," she says, halfway between a whine and a sob. "Are you gonna come get me?"

"Of course I'm going to come get you," he says, wondering what the hell she is doing in the Castro District at three o'clock on a Saturday -- now Sunday -- morning. "But you're going to have to be more specific. Are you outside? Can you give me a landmark or a street name?"

There's a pause, like she's looking at her surroundings for the first time, before she says, "Eighteenth Street. I was at a club, but I can't... I _hate_ uppers, Keith; I hate them. I'm sick and dizzy and I thought fresh air would help and I left, and I just started walking and now I'm here and I lost my fucking car."

"Listen, Rachel." Keith pauses to make sure he has her attention. "I'm going to hang up now, okay? But I'm going to come get you. I'll be there as soon as I can. Don't go anywhere. Stay right by the pay phone for me, okay?"

"Okay, yeah. Okay," she agrees, and Keith swears that he's going to kill whoever gave her the pills.

"All right," Keith says. "I want you to hang up the phone, and as soon as you do that, I'll get in the car."

Rachel hangs up without another word, and Keith breaks land speed records getting to the Castro, where he slows to a crawl and begins his search.

When he finds her, she's nowhere near a pay phone. She's with some guy in his twenties, leaning against a building while he talks to her, his fingers tangled in her hair.

Keith double-parks, engaging the emergency brake violently before getting out of the car.

Rachel spots him before he makes it halfway to her. She grins and ducks away from her companion, bounding over to Keith and wrapping her arms around him. "You're so dependable," she says, tilting her head back to look at him. Her pupils are dilated, huge and black as her eyes move side-to-side, studying Keith's face. "You're pretty great like that, you know. Whenever I need you, there you are. You're the only one who drops everything just because I call."

"That's right," Keith says, wrapping an arm around Rachel. He can feel heat coming off her in waves despite the chilly San Francisco night, and he is acutely aware of the fact that this looks at least as bad as Rachel standing there with that guy's fingers in her hair. "Anytime you need me, you can just call. Now, come on. Let's get you in the car."

Rachel tucks herself against his side as he walks her over to the car, and then clings to him as he helps her inside. It's just enough to shake his balance, and he has to catch himself on the door so he doesn't fall on top of her. "C'mon, kid, let go," he says, loosening her grip and placing her hands in her lap. He doesn't bother telling her to buckle her seatbelt before he shuts the door and walks around to the driver's side.

As he drives back to his place, he keeps glancing at her, looking for some trace of the frantic girl who called him. But she's staring out the window, entranced, one hand pressed against the glass, the other idly rubbing the back of her neck. Keith takes a hand off the wheel and rests it on her shoulder, drawing her attention.

He feels her hand wrap around his, moving it from her shoulder to her lap. Her palm presses warmly against his as she cradles his hand, brushing her fingers across his knuckles.

"How's it going over there?" he asks, sneaking a glance at her. She's staring at his hand, just as enraptured as she had been while looking out the window. There's a small, private smile on her face as she turns his hand palm up.

"Your hands are soft," she says, trailing her index finger across the center of his palm. "It's nice. I can feel all the little lines in your skin, the grooves." She traces the length of his ring finger, drawing circles on the tip. "I can feel your fingerprints."

"I'm sure you can," he mumbles, a little amused and a little annoyed. He wants to forget how good it feels to have her touching him. "Just a few more blocks, kid. Then we'll be home."

"I like going home with you," she says, lacing their fingers together.

Keith just keeps reminding himself how she sounded over the phone.

 

23\. September 30, 1990

Kneeling on the hard bathroom floor, Keith holds Rachel's hair back while she throws up for what he thinks is the fourth time. Her skin is pale and clammy, her hair damp with sweat when Keith slides his hand through it to catch the pieces that keep falling into her face. Blue dye keeps coming off on his fingers.

"It's okay," he says, awkwardly rubbing her back. "You're going to feel better as soon as this is over."

Rachel coughs and spits into the toilet. "I know that," she whines, hugging herself and trying to rub the goosebumps from her arms. She groans and quickly leans forward, dry heaving once before sitting back on her heels. "God, I want this out of my system _now_."

"I know," Keith reassures her, but he doesn't think she hears him because she's throwing up again. His stomach turns in sympathy.

When she's done, Rachel moans and rubs her hands over her face. "I feel... so much better right now," she says, and she laughs, surprised by her own conclusion. She reaches up to put her own fingers through her hair, and Keith feels her back muscles relax beneath his hand. "Lemme get up. I'm not gonna puke again."

Keith sits back to let her get up, and she wastes no time going for her toothbrush and a washcloth. He makes sure she's okay to stand for good, and then heads out to wait on the couch, leaving her alone to get cleaned up.

It's only a few minutes before she walks into the living room, still slightly disheveled. Her clothes are rumpled and her hair messy, but the color is finally returning to her skin.

"Better?" Keith asks.

Rachel nods but doesn't quite look at him. Instead of joining him on the couch, she sits in Keith's overstuffed recliner and pulls her feet up onto the seat.

Biting the inside of his cheek, Keith watches her for a moment. Finally, he says, "What the hell were you doing back there, Rachel?"

"With Julius, you mean?" She rubs the bridge of her nose and pulls her legs closer to her chest. "I bought the pills from him. I know him from the shelter; he needs the money. He's a good guy, Keith."

Keith stares at her and grits his teeth. He wishes Rachel hadn't been so quick, wishes he'd had the opportunity to shove the guy into the wall when he saw him with his hand in Rachel's hair.

He breathes in through his nose in an attempt to relax before opening his mouth, but it doesn't work. He can hardly manage a sentence. "You bought the... from -- damn it, Rachel, you just threw up everything you've eaten for the last six months. He's not a 'good guy' just because you know him from the shelter."

Rachel's eyes narrow and she puts her feet on the floor and leans forward. "He's a good guy," she repeats firmly, stressing each word. She licks her lips. "He was worried. He came and found me to make sure I was okay. I don't know what else you want."

Keith snorts. "No, I can't possibly imagine. It's not like I could have expected him not to sell--"

"Don't," she interrupts. "If he hadn't been there, I would have found someone else, and they probably wouldn't have given a damn what happened to me. I make my own decisions, Keith, even when they're bad ones. You know that."

Keith sighs. "Why, though? You said on the phone that you hate uppers. Why take them if you hate them so much?"

"I don't _hate_ them," she says, sitting back in the recliner. "In the car, did I look like I hated them? They mess me up, yeah, but sometimes, sometimes I need... sometimes the high is worth it." She exhales slowly and looks Keith in the eye. "My parents know. Someone from the school -- there was an article in the Daily about me coming out, and someone mailed it to them, complete with a poster. They didn't exactly hang it on the fridge."

"Oh, kid..." Guilt hits him in the stomach. He knows Rachel would have made those damn posters without his help, but he still wishes he had tried to do more to stop her. At the very least, he wishes it weren't possible her parents saw his unfamiliar handwriting when they opened the mail. "Are you okay?"

Rachel shrugs and leans her head back. "Yeah," she says quietly, talking to the ceiling. She clears her throat, chasing the hurt and fear from her voice. "I mean, the Band-Aid's off, right? It gets better after this."

Keith sits forward on the couch, drawn to her. "What can I do?"

"Nothing." She forces herself to smile, but it's fleeting. "I just need to sleep it off, same as always."

"All right," Keith says, getting to his feet and stepping around the chair to put his hand on Rachel's head. She looks up at him, and he smiles. "Get over on that couch and get some sleep so we can go find your car in the morning, okay?"

 

24\. October 12, 1990

"What the hell happened to your hair?"

It's not the best way to start a conversation, but it's the first thing to leap to Keith's mind when he walks into his office and finds Rachel sitting behind his desk. Her hair is purple now, just like she wanted, but it's also buzzed to within millimeters of her scalp.

When she looks up from the paperclip she's toying with, the red of her eyes quickly distracts Keith from the state of her hair. "It got worse," she says, jaw trembling.

Keith shuts the door and steps around the desk. "How?"

Rachel takes a deep breath and leans her head back, and Keith can't tell if she is avoiding his eyes or trying to keep tears from falling. "I went home to do laundry. No one was there, which... whatever. I'm seventeen; I can do my own laundry. So I get my whites in the wash and my mother comes home, asks what I'm doing there. Duh, I'm doing my laundry, right?" She rolls her eyes. A tear leaks out, but she brushes it away. "You know what she says?"

Keith shakes his head, but Rachel isn't looking at him. She's staring at the paperclip that she's jabbing into the pad of her index finger, turning the skin bright pink.

Keith reaches out and takes her hand to get her attention. "What did she say?"

Rachel meets his gaze, and Keith almost wishes she hadn't. Her eyes are raw from betrayal, and she stares into his for several long seconds before shoving the desk chair back and getting to her feet. She turns her back to him and inches toward the grey filing cabinets. Her fingertips rest on the edge of L-Q.

Rachel exhales so hard Keith can see her shoulders collapse. "They don't want me there. I can't go home." Her next breath is a snorted laugh warring with a sob. "And the funny thing is, when she said that? All I could think was, 'I want my mom.'"

"Kid." His throat hurts almost as much as his chest, and if she makes him say anything else, his voice is going to break.

She turns around, though, and looks blankly at him as she worries her lower lip between her teeth. Her expression is unreadable, and Keith wonders what she's thinking, if she's thinking, but then she closes her eyes and inhales slowly before stepping toward him.

That breath comes out in a sob when his arms wrap around her, squeezing her so hard his shoulders ache. Her fingers knot around the wool of his suit coat and she sniffs against his shoulder, but she doesn't sob a second time.

"You know what the worst part is?" The question is muffled, but she is tucked so tightly against him that Keith can feel the vibration of her voice.

He shakes his head, his chin brushing her short hair. "What?"

"She said I could finish my laundry, but I got so mad that I stormed out. Now I don't have any underwear."

Keith presses his lips together, waiting for her to react, waiting for this to be the thing that pushes her into tears. Instead, he feels her pull back slightly, just enough to look him in the eyes again, and he sees her eyes are shining with light instead of moisture, and the corner of her mouth is pulling slightly upward. He can feel his start to do the same, and that's when Rachel's reaction finally comes.

She laughs.

It's not the laugh of someone trying not to cry; it's the laugh of someone who knows that, from here, things can only get better. It's a laugh full of genuine humor and hope, and Keith lets himself chuckle softly with her. He can feel his grip on her starting to relax now that the worst is over, but her fingers press a little more firmly into his back to make sure he doesn't slip away.

"You still have the clothes you keep at my place," he reminds her. "That has to include some underwear... right? Please tell me it includes underwear."

"Keith." Her voice is stern, and she pulls back to look at him, gripping his shoulders. "I figured out a long time ago that you were doing my laundry. Your detergent is really potent. Plus my clothes were always clean." Her expression softens, and she leans her head against his shoulder. "Thank you."

He shakes his head and smiles, resting his cheek against her purple hair. "It was nothing."

 

Epilogue: August 30, 1991

Keith is home long enough to make it halfway up the stairs before a knock stops him in his tracks. There's no rhythm to the knock, no "Shave and a Haircut," but he knows it's Rachel, and he knows why she's here. It takes a deep breath before he can turn himself around and open the door.

Rachel is crowding the threshold. "You're leaving," she says, her voice rising enough that it almost becomes a question. She crosses her arms over her chest, but the gesture is more self-protective than angry. He sighs and steps back; he swallows and wets his lips. "Kid--"

"No," she interrupts, stepping forward to close the space he just created between them. "I wasn't even watching. My roommate had the TV turned up too loud. I was in the other room, and I could _still_ hear you telling everyone except me that you were leaving, that you were moving to the other side of the country to be on cable."

Keith rubs the back of his neck and looks toward the stairs. He sighs. "I was getting ready for bed."

Rachel snorts. "Don't let me stop you."

Keith reaches up to loosen the knot in his tie. "I wasn't gonna not tell you," he says, letting go of the door and turning inside. The double negative sounds weaselly even to him, and he tries to cover it up as he puts a foot on the bottom step. "I didn't think you'd see it on TV."

Rachel laughs. "You didn't think I'd see it? You mean the same way I didn't see your selective editing on that interview two years ago? Even if I didn't, it's going to be in the paper tomorrow. It's _you_ , Dr. Most-Hated and Mr. Most-Loved; they run gossip columns about you buying underwear because it sells papers. I was going to find out no matter how much you wanted me not to."

"That's not what it was," Keith says. "I just didn't want to tell you tonight."

This time, her laugh is more of a snort. "You want me to believe that?" She's so close behind him on the stairs that she steps on his foot. She doesn't apologize. "What the hell makes tonight so special?"

"It was a long day," he says. "I didn't sign the papers until almost nine."

"You don't go on the air until after eleven. That's more than two hours." She waits until he reaches the top of the steps. "Just admit it: you didn't want to tell me, period."

Keith whips his head around, ready to deny it, but he can't. Instead, he snaps, "You're right," and turns away just as quickly. He's angry that she caught him, angry that she figured this out before he did, and he storms into the bedroom. He yanks open his dresser drawer. "You're right. I didn't want to tell you."

"You didn't want to tell me." Like that, Rachel's tone changes, the sarcasm and the anger bottoming out and leaving behind only hurt and confusion. It takes her a second to catch up, but when she appears in the doorway, her expression has changed, too, her scowl now a simple frown, her narrowed eyes softened from glaring to searching. "Why wouldn't you want to tell me?"

He shrugs with one shoulder as he digs through the drawer, collecting his pajamas. "I knew it was going to hurt." Slowly, he turns back around.

Without her indignation, Rachel deflates, slouching and leaning against the doorframe. She bites her lip before she looks Keith in the eye. "And this didn't?"

He hates the way she's looking at him, her eyes slightly unfocused, like she is more interested in displaying emotion than in seeing. His own eyes squeeze shut briefly and he exhales.

"I'm sorry," he says. He feels foolish, clutching his pajamas like he is, and he lets them fall to the floor.

Rachel presses her lips together, lets her mouth start to hint at a smile, but it fades quickly, and then she's stepping toward him, her arms sliding around his midsection.

"You're leaving," she says quietly, and Keith can feel the shaky breath she lets out. He guides her over to the bed without letting go. "Why?"

He sighs. "I miss my family," he says, rubbing her shoulder as she curls up on her side, still in her boots and leather jacket. "My parents, my sister... God, she was your age when I left. I see her once, twice a year. I keep expecting her to still be seventeen."

"I'm eighteen now," Rachel says into the pillow, and the familiarity of that petty, instinctive correction hits Keith in the gut. He can't believe he's about to go through this again.

Rachel sniffles and turns her head, making sure her words aren't muffled when she says, "What I don't understand, though, is why you didn't take the job before, when you were leaving LA. You had to miss them then, too. So, why did you come here and... and why can't you stay?"

"Oh, kid." He lies down with her, his fingers slipping into her hair, and his right arm snaking around her and squeezing so tightly he worries it might hurt. "You don't need me to stay here. You never needed me here."

She makes a noise in her throat, something like a growl meeting a snort. "You don't think it's possible you need me?"

Keith laughs. "I know I do." It surprises him, how easy it is to say that. He rests his chin against the crown of her head and holds her against his chest. "It might be why I have to leave."

He lets her cry herself to sleep in his arms.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Bases Loaded](https://archiveofourown.org/works/358693) by [bessemerprocess](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bessemerprocess/pseuds/bessemerprocess)




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